B. Scotus’ own Opinion

62. To the question, then, I say that the separated soul can acquire knowledge of an object previously unknown, and knowledge both abstractive and intuitive. The meanings of these terms were stated elsewhere [Rep. IVA d.45 q.2].

1. About Abstractive Knowledge

63. The proof of the first is that when a sufficient active and passive factor are sufficiently close, the effect can follow, and if the agent acts naturally, the effect does follow. But now, when the separated soul has present to it a stone or any object proportioned to it, there come together in the soul an active and a passive factor both sufficient for abstractive knowledge - or for the intelligible species of such object by which abstractive knowledge is had; therefore etc.

64. The proof of the minor is that the agent intellect together with an object is a sufficient active cause of an intelligible species, and no less so when with an external object than with a phantasm (which point they concede); because, as was said in arguing against the opinion [n.52], there is nothing in a phantasm to make it sufficient to cause an intelligible species that does not more eminently belong in the thing of which the phantasm is the phantasm; and the possible intellect is a power sufficiently receptive [of intelligible species].

2. About Intuitive Knowledge

65. This argument proves the second point, namely about intuitive knowledge. For the sufficient causes of this knowledge are the object present in actual existence and the agent and possible intellects; all these can come to be together. And so is it proved, as it seems, that the thing must itself immediately suffice for intellectual knowledge to be had of itself, because the phantasm alone does not suffice for intuitive knowledge of an object, since a phantasm represents a thing existent or not existent, present or not present, and consequently through it knowledge of the thing as it exists in its proper present existence cannot be had. Now such knowledge, which is called intuitive, can be intellective knowledge, otherwise the intellect would not be certain of any existence of any object. But this intuitive knowledge too cannot be had through the presence of the species, because the species represents the thing indifferently as existent and not existent, present and not present.

66. And from this follows that through species infused by God or angels neither intellection is possible for a separated intellect, because the second is not.The second kind is intuitive intellection and the first kind is abstractive, and the first depends on the second. ¹⁸ If then the second is possible, because it is also possible now, it follows that it will be about the thing in itself and not by such infusing.

67. Now the excessive distance of the object impedes this intuitive intellection of the object, because according to Augustine On Care for the Dead 15 n.18, “those souls do not know what is done here unless they learn it from angels or from other newly arriving souls who can tell them what they knew here,” in the way that John the Baptist predicted to the holy souls in limbo that Christ would come down to them, according to Gregory’s exposition [Ten Homilies on the Gospels, 1.6 n.1]“John says therefore, ‘Are you he who is to come or do we wait for another?’, as if he were to say openly, ‘As you deigned to be born for men, indicate whether you deign also to die for men, so that I who have arisen as precursor of your birth am also to be precursor of your death, and am to announce that you are to come in hell whom I have announced are already come in the world’.” ¹⁹ of John’s question in Matthew 11.31, “Are you he who is to come etc.?” But now, if they knew through infused species these conditions of the existence of things, such would not need to be announced to them by the saints, whether angels or souls, who know these matters.a

a.a [Interpolated text]. I specifically believe that it is impossible for any intelligible species to be equivalently in the soul through an influx from angels, because I do not believe that an angel can cause in these lower things any real form that I understand distinct in location, nor consequently cause in the soul an intelligible species (which is a form and a perfect one, though in respect of the object it be said to be intrinsic). Because for the same reason that an angel could impress this form it could impress an intellection on the intellect, since an intellection too is a certain form of intention with respect to a real object; yet an intellection could in itself impress a volition - which [sc. an angel impressing a volition on the soul] no one concedes.